1. Create healing environments by developing and maintaining respectful, caring, professional relationships based upon an understanding of person-environment interactions and the individual experience of health, illness, and healing.

This assignment allowed me to develop a professional and trusting relationship with an older adult I completed a comprehensive health assessment on. It was a holistic look at a patient’s physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health. I was able to develop guidelines on how the patient could have a healthier and more fulfilling life.

2. Provide side, quality, cost-effective care to patients, families, and populations.

This NUR 479 Capstone presentation (file too large to add to this portfolio) is an evidence-based practice project that allowed me to identify and plan a quality improvement implementation. This population specifically focused on end of life and non-verbal patients, however, by reducing dyspnea in these populations (the goal of the project), families will have peace of mind knowing their loved ones are at peace.

3. Collaborate with patients, families, and communities as part of nursing and inter/intraprofessional healthcare teams.

The NUR 402 Public Health Policy paper allowed me to describe the role of a nurse as a community stakeholder. This paper focused on how nurses can use their role and knowledge of the community to for healthier patients and ultimately a healthy community. One of the ways nurses can do this is by collaborating with local politician to advocate for policy change.

4. Integrate informatics and communication systems to improve patient care outcomes.

The NUR 479 Capstone (file too large to attach) presentation was an opportunity to discuss how informatics can be used for better patient outcomes. In this assignment, I discussed use of the RDOS scale for dyspnea management- and propose the RDOS scale should be an assessment added to the assessments in the documentation software. This will help other disciplines to see the severity of the patient’s dyspnea. In addition, I encouraged the use of this scale in the MAR for PRN medications to help the nurses to confidently administer opioids for dyspnea management.

5. Engage in lifelong learning through the application of evidence-based knowledge from nursing and the arts and sciences as the basis for nursing practice.

The professional development assignment encouraged life-long learning by encouraging professional goals and continuing to learn and grow in our role as a nurse. In this assignment, we were also able to provide a holistic nursing framework.

6. Integrate professional nursing standards, the code of ethics, principles of servant leadership, Benedictine values, and a liberal arts education into practice to advance the nursing profession.

In the NUR 336 Ethics and Legal paper, I was able to use critical thinking and liberal arts education to write about both perspectives of a controversial issues- physician assisted suicide. I was able to do this in an objective manner without letting my personal views on the matter to influence the paper. I feel in particular this aligns with the Benedictine value of “respect for persons” because I was able to write about an opposing viewpoint (from my own) in a way that was that respectful towards others.